Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
-
Prosecutors investigating the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame will reportedly not bring charges against top White House adviser Karl Rove. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has already secured a criminal indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
-
Many members of Congress want the Veteran's Administration to pay for services to help all 26 million vets affected by a recent data theft. But some consumer groups say the services don't do much good.
-
Four Connecticut librarians spoke bitterly Tuesday about a months' long gag order they were subjected to after the FBI requested patrons' records under the Patriot Act. The librarians decried their inability to participate in congressional debate on how to rewrite the act.
-
The Senate Intelligence Committee grills Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the president's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Much of the questioning centered on Hayden's role in designing two controversial National Security Agency programs, as well as intelligence concerns.
-
The nation's largest phone companies -- AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth -- reportedly have been providing the National Security Agency with call records of millions of Americans. The agency says it is not listening to the calls, only using them to form a database to detect potential terrorist activity.
-
A federal judge sentences al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison, following a jury's finding Wednesday. In court, Moussaoui declared victory over the United States. But Judge Leonie Brinkema told him that everyone else in the courtroom would live free, Moussaoui would spend life in prison.
-
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentences Zacarias Moussaoui to prison for life, to "die with a whimper," for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In response, Moussaoui declared: "God save Osama bin Laden -- you will never get him."
-
The sentencing phase of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial culminates with the jury recommending life in prison for the confessed terrorist conspirator. The jury apparently agreed with many of the prosecution's key arguments, but ended up voting against the death penalty. Formal sentencing by the judge takes place Thursday.
-
A federal jury in Alexandria, Va., sentences Zacarias Moussaoui to spend the rest of his life in prison on charges that he was a conspirator in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Moussaoui, who confessed to being part of al-Qaida, is the only person charged in the United States in connection to the attacks.
-
The jury has recessed for the weekend without a verdict in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial. The judge questioned the jury briefly before Friday's session after a juror told the judge that another juror had looked up the word "aggravating" at an online dictionary site.